Random Ramblings of an Incoherent Mind

Dharamsala Trip – Day 2

The institute offers yoga classes to everyone starting from 6 am. All residents of the center are given hot water to drink at 530 am regardless of whether they want to attend the class.

However, somehow the guy in charge bypassed waking me up and thus I could not attend the yoga class on the first day. It turned out well though considering how the rest of the day turned up.

We explored the treatment center, which offers numerous naturopathy courses raging from sauna to massage. Free consultation with the doctor is also provided. We all made appointments for various sessions, mine being body massage as usual 🙂 However, before booking the appointment, I attended a foot reflexology session to test out the worthiness of the session.

Before I continue, let me state that spa is one arena I am weak-kneed about. I like body massages and try to go for one wherever I can. Thus I can with some confidence comment on the quality of massage sessions. And the foot reflexology session was awesome.

The lady knew exactly what she was doing. Though she was strong, she did tailor her arm strength to suit me. She was also not the very talkative types, which suited me just fine as I like peace and quiet in the massage room. Having had such a positive experience, I did not hesitate to sign up for a full body massage the next day.

The other members of our group attended various sessions that day leaving me and 2 kids who were accompanying us free to do our own stuff. We ended up doing what boys with free time in India do: play cricket.

Let me introduce the kids, one is a 3 year old called Vidu in short and the other is Dev, A’s 10 year old son. Both the kids are extremely well bought up and were loads of fun to be around with. It also helped that I love kids and thoroughly enjoyed playing with them.

My childhood memories of cricket somehow left me with the impression that I was decent at batting, though quite lousy at field work and bowling. However, I turned out to be crap at all three!!

I could not bat to save my life, could not field for nuts and my ball hit my head when I bowled! To add ‘insult to injury’ as the saying goes, I was beaten hollow by a 10 year old! Nevertheless it forced me to update my the skill-set side of my memory 🙂

Post lunch we headed off to Chamundi temple followed by the much awaited event of the day, IPL! YES, I finally managed to attend an IPL match! It was not a match of tigers, both the teams (Kings XI Punjab and Deccan Chargers) not being very good teams but who cared, it was a match nevertheless! I wanted to attend a cricket match in India for a few reasons:

Where else can you attend a cricket match?

I wanted to feel the ambiance of a cricket stadium in a cricket mad country

Well the match was well worth it. The last match I attended was a soccer match between Barcelona and Mallorca at Camp Nou in Barcelona. That stadium house around 90,000 to full capacity and an experience to be encountered.

This was no different. The stadium was much smaller, with a capacity at my estimate to be around 48,000. This allowed us to sit right in front and get a good view not only of the happenings but also close-up views of the players. There were some pretty cricket mad people in our team too which made watching the match all the more fun.

Post match, we headed off to another temple (Chinamukhi) before reaching the hotel at around midnight. Oh, the dinner! I had the best aloo parathas for dinner. Along with a kind of pickle well-known in that place (I forget the name), the paratha were simply out of this world. At least for me!